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Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Well . . . yesterday officially marked 1 year since I started this blog. It's been quite a year! In fact, I was so busy sewing yesterday I didn't spend any time blogging.

Not a bad way to spend a blogiversary I would say. :)

So though I've been apparently absent from the blog for the last week, I've been working my fingers to the bone on this:

The pictures are truly of atrocious quality, but until I get better ones these will have to do. If you'll recall I was working on a bit of a deadline as my in-laws left to go visit the recipient (my new nephew!) very early this morning and I finished it LATE last night. I've been working on it round the clock for the last week (ok . . . not exactly ROUND the clock, but at every moment I could steal between kid stuff, cleaning, making food, and working.) As is usually the case, I grossly underestimated how much time it would take me to put it all together.

I tried to take a "detail" shot of the quilting. As I did with the Love Birds Taggie Quilt, I used a decorative stitch with variegated thread to do the quilting. I'm no stipple-r and I really didn't want to quilt over the blocks themselves anyway, so I settled for simple quilting around the squares at each intersection. It added back in some green which pulled the whole thing together and gave it some extra interest on top. Not that you can tell that much from this awful picture:

As I was scrambling to finish late last night and still get it over to my in-laws by daybreak, I did take a few moments to try to photograph it. Not surprisingly, I discovered half the lightbulbs in my house were completely blown out. The "best" lighting I could find was on the landing in my staircase. As you can see . . . it still wasn't good.

Also, Kee-ku kept trying to interfere in the picture taking:

In any event, it's on its way right now to my little nephew (who lives 6 states away!) I figure if I can't be there to hug him, he'll always have the quilt. :)

NOT PICTURED: Little chunk of my finger I accidentally rotary chopped off while cutting the sashing. Because no one wants to see that.

In conclusion I just wanted to say thanks, everyone, for joining me as I blogged along this last year. It's been so fun I think I'll do it for another year. ;)

I hope everyone has a blessed and Happy Thanksgiving!

As always, I'm linking up with some great parties this week. Check them out and join in on the fun RIGHT HERE.
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Tuesday, November 9, 2010

I'm totally honored to be featured. For those of you not familiar with either of her blogs you should definitely CHECK THEM OUT. :) I mentioned Remodelaholic in my post about my favorite Home Decor blogs, it's one of the best to get you inspired to spruce up your space.

Monday, November 8, 2010

I spent a good portion of Saturday evening cutting out itty bitty squares for a new quilt I'm working on for my nephew. I have no idea what the real name of this block is. I'm calling it the Sawtooth Pinwheel because it has elements of both of those blocks . . . long-time quilters: feel free to correct me on the name!

I chose some cheery but down to earth colors for this quilt . . . my little nephew's name literally means, "Peaceful Forest".

I am not usually wooed by the fat quarter bundles at Jo-Ann . . . usually I find them really uninspiring and the colors don't grab me. These ones, though . . . they just spoke to me. I bought a bundle hoping that 5 fat quarters would be enough to make a little blanket.

I picked the gray as a background (rather than white) because I thought it would help me get away with using a floral print for a little boy. ;)

I'm not gonna lie . . . I'm pretty proud of myself for getting all those squiggles going in the same direction.

I'm under the gun just a little bit . . . my in-laws are going down to Texas to meet the little man over Thanksgiving and I want to finish it so they can hand deliver it for me. The last time I shipped a quilt I was terrified it would get lost in the mail.

(It wasn't. No worries.)

I've been working on a lot of other projects lately . . . just haven't had much time to photograph and post. Will try to get working on getting those documented soon.

In the meantime, I'm thinking about writing up a little tute on how to make this little block. I found instructions for a similar-ish block that helped me figure out how to do it, but I changed it around to give that alternating pinwheel effect. There may be instructions out there somewhere already, but I sure couldn't find any.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Happily, my most recent handmade *Happy Birthday* effort was well received. Remember the superhero cape I made for my niece (complete with blow-up princess sword)? It made for a perfect crazy Halloween costume:

Super G with her GINORMOUS princess sword.

Cape Shot!

Super G springing into action! You do not want to mess with this sword, I assure you!